Please understand: THERE ARE NO POLITICAL SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS THE U.S. IS FACING. The outcome of this election is meaningless, one way or the other. The more you keep grasping for glimmers of hope within the political system, the worse off you will be.

"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.

"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."